Stewart's airlines add flights

Wednesday

May 26, 2010 at 2:00 AM

STEWART AIRPORT — At Stewart International Airport these days, they look for even the tiniest signs of hope.So it was good news that passenger traffic was up by more than 2,000 in March, and more than 1,000 in April, compared to the same months last year.

BY Michael Randall

STEWART AIRPORT — At Stewart International Airport these days, they look for even the tiniest signs of hope.

So it was good news that passenger traffic was up by more than 2,000 in March, and more than 1,000 in April, compared to the same months last year.

But even more significant was the fact that Stewart's airlines have been adding flights.

General Manager Diannae Ehler told the Stewart Airport Commission on Tuesday that since the first of the year, Delta has added a third flight to Detroit on Sundays. More recently, U.S. Airways added a fourth flight to Philadelphia on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which have been its slow days.

Both of those routes have strong appeal to business travelers, which Stewart is trying to woo more of these days.

"Frequency of (flights to their) destinations is very important to the business travelers," Ehler explained.

Even with the added flights, Stewart continues to maintain a load factor — the percentage of seats filled — of about 78 percent. Ehler called that a "solid number."

"We are on target for about 400,000 passengers this year," Ehler said. The airport recorded 390,680 passengers through its gates in 2009.

Meanwhile, Port Authority, which runs the airport, is continuing its efforts to lure both new passengers and new airlines.

Billboards are going up around the area — along Routes 299 and 209 in Ulster County and Route 17 in Orange County, among other locations — touting the three airlines that fly out of Stewart and their destinations.

There's also a TV commercial that just started running on local cable TV channels.